Sunday HeraldSunday Herald - 19 March 2006
      I cant wait till next week when this selfish, filthy right goes up in 
      smoke
      Muriel Gray on being proud of Scotlands smoking ban



      Im getting this in a week early, because frankly Im so excited I cant 
      wait. Smoking. Banned in all Scotlands public places. Forever. I cant 
      tell you what this means to me. Well, actually I can, and in fact thats 
      precisely what Im about to do. 
      The debate leading to this piece of legislation has been a predictable 
      plod towards common sense, sidestepping, as it has done, all the 
      duplicitous, corrupt nonsense from the official pro-smoking lobby, 
      pretending to fight for civil liberties whilst conveniently forgetting to 
      highlight their funding from tobacco multinationals. In the end though, 
      the arguments from those losers with brown teeth, yellow fingers and skin 
      like Gollum, that the nanny state has gone too far, were defeated not by 
      the moral reprehensibility of their selfishness harming others, but by 
      straightforward financial considerations. 
      If you knowingly expose your staff/customers/the general public to a toxic 
      substance that can kill them, they may sue you, they will almost certainly 
      win and it will cost you a lot of money. Nothing convinces Corporate 
      Scotland to change its ways more conclusively than the thought of 
      financial loss. 
      That the Swallow Hotel group are challenging this in the courts, with the 
      surreal argument that a smoking ban is an affront to human rights, should 
      not be any cause for concern. Nobody will suffer. They are simply going to 
      lose a great deal of money, which they can doubtless claim back in a 
      weekend by bumping up the cost of the soft-porn in-room pay movies during 
      a conference of mono-blocking sales reps. Nor do the arguments of health 
      fascism hold much water, since the government is only protecting shared 
      public places, leaving the smoker to enjoy blowing cancer-inducing toxins 
      all over his or her children in the confines of a car, their home or 
      anywhere else they choose.
      Perhaps sensibly drafted legislation could be constructed to stop that 
      too, but since no-one is yet proposing it smokers would be wise to be 
      grateful for the human right to damage their childrens health and shut 
      the hell up. 
      That all this was an almost unanimous cross-party MSP decision, well in 
      advance of Westminster and without the ridiculous confusing mess that is 
      still being tortuously mangled in England and Wales, makes me want to kiss 
      the whole blooming lot of them. Well, perhaps I draw the line at Annabel 
      Goldie, but you get the idea that on this occasion Im pretty damn proud 
      of our Scottish parliament. Because debating points aside, my response to 
      this week leading up to this historic ban is entirely emotional.
      I grew up in a world of smokers, in the house, in my college, in my work. 
      The difference then was that the smokers, particularly at home, had 
      absolutely no idea whatsoever that it was harming them or me. If they had 
      known, they wouldnt have started smoking. Im absolutely certain of that. 
      When I left our house it was out into a world that was also full of other 
      peoples smoke. Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. In the cinema, on the 
      bus, in shops, offices I worked in, you name it. Non-smokers like me were 
      not permitted to complain because there was nothing wrong in smoking, and 
      everyone did it. 
      In the museum I worked in, to enjoy a coffee break meant breathing in 
      everyones smoke in the staff room. These were lovely kind, considerate, 
      clever people whom I adored, and rather than miss out on their amusing 
      company and gossip, I sat with them and inhaled their smoke instead of 
      exiling myself to the smoke-free areas of the museum to have coffee alone. 
      One of the heaviest smokers, a wonderful wise and witty woman I absolutely 
      worshiped, died of smoking-related cancer and I miss her still. 
      I met friends in Glasgow pubs to go on and dance in clubs until three in 
      the morning every weekend, inhaling lungfulls of smoke all night long. 
      This was the equivalent of doing four hours of aerobics in a smoke-filled 
      room. It doesnt bear thinking about how utterly stupid that was. In 
      addition, of course, one spent a fortune in dry-cleaning clothes to take 
      away the sour, stale stench of it. 
      And then the big one. The unspeakable one. The unforgivable one. My 
      father, a smoker since the age of 14, when he was persuaded along with all 
      his friends that it was the cool, adult and elegant thing to do, left us 
      all behind when he died of smoking-related heart disease at the ridiculous 
      age of 54. He never saw his grandchildren.
      He grew up in an age when hosts automatically offered their guests a 
      cigarette, when every movie star had a signature way of lighting up, when 
      not to smoke would have been regarded as peculiar and antisocial, and all 
      the time the tobacco companies knew perfectly well what their product was 
      doing to their customers and kept it quiet. He tried to stop many times 
      and couldnt, because even 20 years ago there was little or no practical 
      help for nicotine addicts, and certainly no sympathy.
      Next week wont bring back my father, or my friend, or any of the hundreds 
      of thousands of people who died painful, undignified, terrible deaths 
      because filthy, greedy, corporate monsters worked hard at keeping the 
      truth from their customers. What it might do is save the next generation 
      from a similar fate. If the ban makes social smoking almost impossible for 
      our children, if it makes the smoker into a pariah instead of a hero, then 
      it will be one of the most significant pieces of legislation our 
      government will ever make. This is not about smelly clothes, irritation 
      and inconvenience. This is about life and death.
      Its impossible to articulate the rage that the bereaved feel when a death 
      was preventable, and I challenge any of the reeking-breathed campaigners 
      to meet me eye-to-eye and tell me how bloody aggrieved they are that they 
      cant smoke in a hotel foyer. Bring your own riot shield. 



       
      Copyright  2006 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088
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